DogForge by Casey Calouette Page A

collapsed and curled himself up with his tail tucked around his nose. His paws were tucked tight under him and his eyes locked shut.
    Denali stood above him and shivered. She sighed, coughed in the darkening light, and began the walk back up to find the cylinder.
    The rocks were dull beneath her paws. She could smell her own blood marking the path. Her paws were beyond pain and nearly frozen. The wind slammed into her. She hunched down and waited for it to ebb.
    The wind sounded like a howl and she thought of the exile. Alone, no pack, nothing but an animal. She wondered how he made it through these nights. All she wanted was to be back with Barley, Grat, and the pups.
    The back side of the mountain was dark like smoke. She stopped on the edge and scanned below for blue lights, but saw nothing. Every step down reminded her that it would be one more step back up. Then she came again to the canister and plucked it out from the grit.
    She stopped at the top of the ridge. The canister glowed a blue dim light that illuminated her face. She stared out into the darkness.
    A smudge of color like dirty water marked the horizon. The sea was lost to a shimmer of starlight. Her eyes focused on a single blinking light, white and pure, that stood like a bastion on the horizon.
    There was her trial. The older dogs spoke of it in reverent tones, a place where the will of men still stood. But none could speak of exactly what took place. All she knew is that not all who entered, left.
    The chill of the canister reminded her that the machine gods demanded tribute, and what she clutched was her only entrance. She sighed, took one last glance at the blinking light, and worked her way down.
    She found Samson and slumped next to him, but not too close. The ground was hard but strangely welcoming. She tucked the canister between her paws and fell soundly asleep.

CHAPTER SIX
Green
    T he sun rose but no light cast upon Denali. A dusting of snow rested on everything like a veil. The smells up high were crisp and clean with only the slightest touch of life below.
    Denali sniffed. “Samson!” she barked. Her eyes snapped open.
    Only a patch of bare ground marked where he had slept.
    She howled angrily, snatched up the canister and ran.
    The air was beyond cold. There was no sign of Samson anywhere. Snowflakes fell like ash from the sky and covered Denali’s tracks almost as quickly as she made them. The valley was obscured in snow but still she picked her way lower.
    Rock gave way to boulders with slopes of snow between them.
    She stopped on the edge of a slope and stared down. The snow was tempting, it would be the quickest, no rocks to pick through, just speed. She remembered the avalanche but the cold was getting to her.
    She stepped out slowly onto the snowfield and breathed past the cylinder. It seemed fine. Then she ran.
    The snow under her feet felt like gravel, a hard sort of snow, it crunched and she liked the sound. It made her feel better, it sounded strong. The wind shifted and the clouds broke, the greenery of the valley appeared and then was gone. She ran faster.
    A crack sounded through the air. The entire snowbank settled and dropped a fraction of an inch. Denali stopped and didn’t even breath. Her eyes looked from side to side and then she felt the movement.
    The slope collapsed suddenly in a wall of white and Denali struggled and swam and surged. Snow burned at her face and ears and packed itself into her nose. She howled and barked and tried to swim out of it. To her it felt like a river of snow, then she couldn’t breathe.
    She fought to survive the avalanche. One moment she’d pop up and see light and cough and hack and the next she was swallowed up again. The sound was a roar in her ears, a pure natural violence.
    She collided with a boulder and cried out and then the movement stopped. She coughed out and shook her head and tried to sit up. Then she realized the canister was gone.
    “No!” she cried. She ran back towards